Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
stove kitchen and food storage areas. At night, each of us would be on
our own to choose a comfy spot on the soft sandy beach to bed down
and sleep under the stars.
A BAJA ADVENTURE
The time came for departure. The stakebed truck and pickup were piled
high with equipment: ten scuba tanks, two air compressors (just in case
one failed), two Zodiac inflatable boats and outboard motors, tables,
chairs, oxygen, Styrofoam shipping boxes and plastic bags for sending
animals back to the aquarium, not to mention personal belongings,
kitchen equipment, and canned goods. Duplication was our motto: if
any item was essential to our success, we took two. The large fish trans-
port tank was filled with drinking water for the trip down. When it
was empty, it would be filled with seawater and used to bring back the
large morays as well as the animals collected on the drive back up the
peninsula. The mountain of stu¤ we were bringing was mind-boggling.
The Mexican collecting permit we'd applied for a year earlier still
hadn't arrived, but we had a letter from Mexico City stating that it had
been issued, it was on its way, and we would receive it shortly. There
were many reasons we couldn't postpone the departure date of the trip,
and word that the permit was coming was good enough. The two trucks
took o¤ for Baja.
The plan was this: one group—consisting of John O'Sullivan (the
lead man on this project from start to finish), aquarist Steve Brorsen,
our former collector Bob Kiwala, and Ron McConnaughey, whom
we had “borrowed,” along with his Zodiac, from Scripps—would drive
the two trucks the four hundred miles to San Diego, cross the bor-
der at Tijuana, and then continue straight on to Los Frailes, another
eight hundred miles away. They would pick up four additional people
flying in to San José del Cabo —aquarists Mark Ferguson and Carolyn
Darrow, curator Chuck Farwell, and underwater photographer Flip
Nicklin—and with their help get the camp set up. After several days
of collecting, some of the early participants would fly back, and oth-
ers would fly down to take their place. The third group would include
aquarists Scott Nygren, John Christiansen, Bruce Upton, Dave Wro-
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